{"id":626,"date":"2013-07-13T15:01:51","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T15:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/blog\/?p=626"},"modified":"2013-07-13T15:01:51","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T15:01:51","slug":"staying-positive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/blog\/staying-positive\/","title":{"rendered":"Staying positive."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/speed_limit_501.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft  wp-image-629\" alt=\"speed_limit_50\" src=\"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/speed_limit_501-296x300.png\" width=\"178\" height=\"180\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/speed_limit_501-296x300.png 296w, http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/speed_limit_501.png 435w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 178px) 100vw, 178px\" \/><\/a>I\u2019m 50, according to my Birth Certificate. As my (otherwise lovely) elder daughter just said \u201cHow does it feel to be half a century, Dad?!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Thing is, in my head I\u2019m about 29.<\/p>\n<p>This whole \u2018growing up\u2019 thing has come as something of a shock&#8230; and it\u2019s been a heck of a year. So much has happened, a lot of it not good, that I\u2019m finally beginning to understand why the ancient Chinese curse of \u201cMay you live in interesting times!\u201d is actually a curse!<\/p>\n<p>Until a few days ago I felt a bit beaten up, and very, very depressed. I wasn\u2019t fighting back much when things went wrong &#8211; except out of pure stubborn-ness.<\/p>\n<p>Why? Because as I cast my mind back over the year it had been such a bad one &#8211; I\u2019d lost friends and contracts.<\/p>\n<p>Fortunately, my wife (who if she\u2019s reading this should be a officially recognised as a saint) reminded me of my year\u2019s log. It\u2019s not a diary as such, just a logging of the good things.<\/p>\n<p>For good evolutionary reasons we\u2019re programmed to remember the bad times more easily than the good, so keeping a log of the good times\/things\/activities\/outcomes\/moments helps to balance this tendency. For the life of me I can\u2019t remember the researcher who recommended it (but if I had to guess I\u2019d say it was Prof Martin Selegman) but I\u2019ve found it to be a remarkably useful tool for putting the negative memories in context.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, it\u2019s easier said than done, so here are some tools and tricks to help you do it.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A paper diary. It\u2019s easy to underestimate the value of good ol\u2019 analogue. There\u2019s something about writing things down with a good quality pen in a good quality book that feels better than just typing, no matter how cool your computer. I recommend you use a diary that has the days marked off in it, so that if you forget\/miss a day you\u2019ll see that you\u2019ve done so. Jot down the good stuff &#8211; including (very importantly!) the days when nothing happened of particular significance. These are the days when nothing happened, when nothing went wrong. These are the days you\u2019ll forget about otherwise, remembering only the \u2018interesting\/bad\u2019 days.<\/li>\n<li>A blog. You don\u2019t have to publish it to the world if you don\u2019t want to! What\u2019s more, it\u2019s got the added advantage of being with you everywhere you go (almost) so you can update it easily when you\u2019re traveling etc. The downside is that it\u2019s all too easy to neglect it if you\u2019re under pressure &#8211; you might want to consider a plug-in that \u2018nags\u2019 you to write an entry<\/li>\n<li>Your phone (or iPad). Speaking of nagging, why not just set your smartphone to nag you nag you when you go to bed? That way, you never forget to think about the good things at least once a day&#8230; What\u2019s more, there are some handy apps which will help.<\/li>\n<li>Children. If you\u2019ve got young children that you put to bed still (bed time stories and ritual) it\u2019s worth considering a good-things-debrief with them.\u00a0 My kids are waaaaaay too old for this now (I go to bed before them) and I can\u2019t promise it works because I\u2019ve not tried it, but someone on one of our recent training courses recommended it &#8211; she said it worked really, really well for her. If she ever forgot, her daughter reminded her in no uncertain terms! \ud83d\ude42<\/li>\n<li>A simple wall calendar. Ticks and crosses on a calendar is a great visual reminder that the bad days (red crosses) are the odd-days-out when you see them surrounded by green ticks!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That\u2019s it!\u00a0 I\u2019m sure you guys can think of a better, longer list. Whatever works for you, works!\u00a0 The important thing isn\u2019t how you record it but that you record it (in enough detail for you to get the idea of things going well and to put the bad days into context.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m 50, according to my Birth Certificate. As my (otherwise lovely) elder daughter just said \u201cHow does it feel to be half a century, Dad?!\u201d Thing is, in my head I\u2019m about 29. This whole \u2018growing up\u2019 thing has come as something of a shock&#8230; and it\u2019s been a heck of a year. So much [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":629,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general-thoughts","category-myths-and-rants","category-stress"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}